As writers, we're told that we should "Show, Not Tell" all the time, and it's advice that is usually quite helpful. When possible, we need to let a scene unfold before the readers, to where they get to see what happens and to experience the details just as the characters do. But there are times … Continue reading When Just Showing Isn’t Enough
Tag: Show Don’t Tell
As writers and artists, we're always looking for ways to express things better, to show our readers and audience how a character is growing, developing, and changing, and recently, through watching The Glass Slipper, I encountered a new means of adding to the "show, don't tell" techniques: dance. The plot is that of Cinderella, with Leslie Caron … Continue reading Dance as a Means of Showing, Not Telling
As part of the ongoing Flashback Friday series, here is a post that was originally published in May 2014 George R. R. Martin, the author of the novels on which the “Game of Thrones” television series is based, fielded some questions via email regarding why he included sexual violence in his works. He stated that his philosophy … Continue reading Violence in Books: Do We Need the Details?
Every story has exposition--details of the character and world that you, as the author, need to pass on to the reader. You've spent hours fleshing out the world of your story and learning about your characters, and now you have to find some way of getting this information (or at least the essential part) from … Continue reading Four Ways to Handle Backstory
By Page 18, I knew I needed to own my own copy of Showing & Telling by Laurie Alberts, a writing book arguing that we need both vibrant scenes and effective, efficient summaries to carry a story along. By Page 37, she had me thinking about aspects of some of my own scenes, and by … Continue reading Making Scenes Work
I’m a firm believer that writers need to know the rules, and most of the time, that they should follow them. But this depends greatly on what kind of rules we’re talking about. Grammar rules are the ones I support the most. We need to know what a comma splice is, and a fragment, and … Continue reading When Writing Rules are Wrong
Andrea Lundgren 